NitrogenBreathing ButterflyWinged BalloonFish
by tepid sponge bath
Summary: ...and Fog-Flavored Spiders.  Wherein D.I. Lestrade talks to a mad girl with a dog at a crime scene.  Her conversation is colorful and winding and difficult to follow, and she smells of sweat, sour wine, late nights, and old leather...


**Note**: Written for this fill on the Sherlock kink meme: _Mycroft or Lestrade meeting any of the Endless_.

**Disclaimer**: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this. The same goes for Neil Gaiman's _Sandman_ and all characters thereof.

**Nitrogen-Breathing Butterfly-Winged Balloon-Fish and Fog-Flavored Spiders**

It was a suicide, clearly, or maybe a murder.

Whatever it was, Ian McPherson had quite terminally stepped off of the roof of a building seven stories high. If it was a suicide, he had _meant_ it. There had been none of that business of standing on the ledge and dithering about whether or not to take the small step into oblivion.

If it had been a murder, it was pretty efficient all the same. Greg Lestrade wondered if he should call in Sherlock Holmes.

Five or six years ago, he'd have written the thing off as a clear case of Ian McPherson simply not wanting to be alive anymore, and told his people to take care of the mess on the sidewalk as he went to deal with the paperwork over a strong cup of tea. But then, five or six years ago, he didn't have the benefit of knowing the world's only consulting detective.

There were no signs of struggle on the rooftop (which already had forensics crawling all over it) or in McPherson's flat (forensics would be crawling all over that in a bit), but Lestrade couldn't help feeling that he was missing something vital.

He held his phone distractedly as Donovan told him about the contents of McPherson's coat pockets: a mobile, his wallet, receipts for coffee from the cafe down the road, a pen, and lint. Nothing very unusual. Nothing much to go on, and maybe nothing to summon Sherlock over. Lestrade wondered if he was willing to stand the snark he would undoubtedly get from the man if this turned out to be just another city suicide, and his suspicion nothing more than an uncomfortable feeling in his gut.

He walked a little way away from his people and the rather grisly remains of what used to be McPherson, turning the phone over and over in his hands. It was turning into a habit, possibly an unhealthy habit, to call Sherlock whenever anything particularly thorny presented itself, but it got the job done, got the perpetrators caught (and better still, convicted), and wasn't that what mattered, really?

Lestrade sighed and looked up at the building McPherson had jumped off of, glanced up and down the street. A man dead and no witness except the city. He wished London could tell him what had happened.

"She likes you, you know," said a voice like rainbows and drums and a million, million flavors of cotton candy.

He looked up from searching for Sherlock's number in his mobile's phone book. There was a girl standing just outside the yellow tape that blocked off the crime scene, her half-shaven head tilted to one side and a dog at her heels.

"Sorry?"

"She likes you. London. A lot. Like. Likelikelike fish and chips _and_ rain on a sunny day Sunday." It was a decidedly strange statement from a decidedly strange person. She was a small girl, dressed in fishnet stockings riddled with holes and an overlarge jumper, the hair on the unshaved side of her head a grubby mess of streaks and streaks of color. One of her eyes was green and the other blue, and both were regarding the detective inspector with the grave air of the very mad, or the very stoned. Or, possibly, both at once. Jesus, thought Lestrade. He knew crackheads started early, sometimes, but it was the first time he'd seen one this far gone, this young.

"My sister was here," she said, her fingers twisting the string of the balloon she was holding. It was a remarkable thing in the shape of an exotic tropical fish, and Lestrade put his not noticing it before down to his preoccupation with his phone. The detail was incredible, and the fins and the tail were even waving gently in a manner that was almost lifelike. "I was here, too. Not always, but sometimes, eventually."

The detective inspector approached her slowly, not wanting to scare her off.

"You were here?" he asked cautiously.

"That's what I said I said it didn't I say it or _may_be not otherpeople could have said it before I'm not sure may_be_ we all said it at the same time." The girl reached out, touched the crime scene tape lightly with one pale finger. "This is silly. Your yellow plastic-strip-thingy to keep things out. It wouldn't work, it doesn't stop people except in their heads. You should have purple-orange stone trolls seven feet high with iron clubs in a line if-if-if-_if_-if you really wanted to keep things out." She tilted her head to the other side as if considering this. "Or they could be yellow too. If you like," she said, clearly granting him a great concession.

"I think we'll make do with the tape, thanks." Lestrade blinked. Had he thought that she was wearing a jumper? It was a man's suit jacket, and he wished that she would hold it closed - all she seemed to be wearing underneath was more torn netting, like her stockings, and she was old enough for it to be indecent. "Did you see what happened?"

"I didn't see it, not really _see_. I was busy being dragonflies. But I was here. Andyouwanttoknowwhodiditdon''tsoI'lltellyou." She hugged herself, jumped on one foot, then on the other. Her fish balloon bobbed in the air, fins fluttering as though it was trying to keep its balance. "London likes you and she likes me too. It's nice, when London likes you."

"Well, I like London too. Look, kid, are you all right?"

She shook her head slowly. "Noooooooo, no, I don't think so. I haven't been all right for a looooooooooooooooong time, mister. It was the bees."

"The bees?"

"The bees." The girl leaned in close, over the tape. She smelled of sweat, late nights, sour wine, and old leather, all underlined with a whiff of utter insanity. Lestrade wasn't surprised – he supposed it was a near miracle that she didn't smell worse. "It was the bees. There was a squillion of them and they lived in his left ear and told him secrets and stories he should never know. Or it could have been fog-flavored spiders in his appendix. Either one." She pointed to the earthly remains of Ian McPherson. "He was one of mine. He was nice except when he was sane."

It should have bothered Lestrade that a girl that young wasn't even a little disturbed by a man who had leapt to his death. But somehow, it was...all right. Fitting, even. Damned if he could explain it.

The balloon-fish's mouth opened and closed as if it was actually breathing.

"Who _are_ you?" Lestrade asked. Had it always been the left side of her head that was shaved? Everything about her seemed to shift and slide in eye-watering lack of attention to detail. He wondered if he was going ever-so-slightly out of his head.

The dog, a large German shepherd, nosed at her hand.

"Barnabas says we should go now. I think he's right. I think I want to be nitrogen-breathing fishes now, with butterfly wings." She tugged at the jacket, which had slipped off one shoulder. "Buh-bye."

Lestrade was going to stop her, ask who she was, what she had seen, try to get her _help,_ but his phone rang. He looked down to thumb the answer button, and when he looked up again, there was no trace of the crazy girl with the fish-balloon. No trace at all.

"Paranoid schizophrenia." It was Sherlock. Lestrade would have recognized the smugly superior tone, even without the distinctive voice.

"What?"

There was a sharp, irritated sigh. "Ian McPherson had paranoid schizophrenia, untreated, probably undiagnosed, probably put it down to demons - he's requested an exorcism at least once. That's why he jumped off the roof. Talk to his neighbors. Really, Lestrade, even your _silence_ sounds surprised. John saw Anderson on the news, and the lot of you looked so pitifully stumped over there. I thought I should head you off before you called. Talk to me when you actually have something _interesting_." And he hung up.

Lestrade called him back, calling the consulting detective some very foul names in his head. "So it was a suicide?" he asked when Sherlock finally picked up.

"What do you think?" said Sherlock testily. "Though he probably didn't actually mean to kill himself. Maybe he thought he was being chased by killer bees or something like that. Stop _boring_ me."

"You called first."

"Only so you wouldn't."

"Well. Thanks anyway. You don't usually call."

"I have nothing better to do." The line went dead again.

Lestrade pocketed his phone and turned back to the crime scene. So it was a suicide. True, he only had Sherlock's word to go on, but Sherlock's word was usually good enough. There would be evidence to back it up, if they looked for it. He shook his head, as though doing that would clear it. Suspecting murder on no evidence at all, and nearly believing what that poor, mad girl had said even when she had gotten to the bit about the bees. What was he coming to?

Maybe he was just tired. Lestrade figured that he should probably take it easy for a little while, once - _if_ - he managed to wind up his more urgent cases.

If he wasn't careful, he'd find that he was going mad himself.


End file.
